CIA's EU Air Miles

From Ovi magazine - Ovi Lehti in Finnish,

Reading on the news that the European Parliament has approved a damning report on secret CIA flights that condemns member states, which colluded in the operations, I felt that Strasburg must be definitely on another planet watching what’s going on back on Earth, at the least they are definitely not in Europe.

Often reading some of the decisions the EU parliament takes, I feel that they are more wishful thoughts than anything to do with reality and this is one of them. I think what this USA administration doing is an international crime and are violating everything in which I believe; my beliefs have long been instituted under the Charta of the Human Rights.

I hope, in the near future, the ones who manipulated decisions that led to prison camps, such as the one in Guantanamo, will answer to justice and get the right punishment - I include George W. Bush and the former American Defense Minister Donald Rumsfeld in that. Still, this is a game that still goes on and George W. Bush and his company are leading the American administration and a superpower’s army.

However, coming back to Europe; Europe had to live on the edge after 9/11. From one side they were not able to participate in the invasion of Iraq, foreseeing the catastrophic results for the people of Iraq and then having to face the menace of the American administration that didn’t hesitate to cast enemies the ones that opposed their decision, even if that meant traditional allies like France and Germany. The short term economic results of this opposition were fast obvious for the European countries that tried to later calm the giant by legalizing more illegal actions and let the USA administration draw them into a swamp of illegalities.

According to the report, fourteen out of the twenty-five state members of the EU allowed the US to remove terror suspects. They are wrong, all twenty-five would have done it if the US had asked for it; it just happened to be these fourteen. Most of the European countries are members of NATO, an alliance that the US dominates or they want to be members. The ones who weren’t at the time, they eventually did after they gave their full support.

For the ones like Finland that kept their neutrality, it was a totally different game. President Tarja Halonen was advertising the neutrality; the Foreign Minister was assuring everybody Finland’s obedience to the UN decisions and the Prime Minister at the time Paavo Lipponen was assuring George W. Bush that he would have any help, so long as they kept it off the record.

So, when the time came for the CIA to employ flying prisons the question was, are you going to tell us the time you are flying so we can put out the red carpet or are you happy with just a small party in the VIP room? The report adds that the CIA had operated 1,245 flights, some taking suspects to states where they could face torture. That much about human rights, that much about everybody is innocent before proven guilty, that much about preaching democracy.

The truth is that Europe and the US have a lot of open wounds to heal and that will definitely take sometime. In the process of healing, the EU parliament had better demand justice instead of condemning the states that are in the middle of the cyclone the US has created and made them act like dumb children.